I should be updating this blog more often, but the last few months have been terribly busy, so that writing in any personal way has had to take a back seat to the demands of work. I see now that the last time I wrote was in December, when Fifi, my cat died, which was terribly sad and cast a real pall over Christmas. We all still miss her terribly. Sometimes I still think I hear the sound of the bell on her collar, which tinkled as she padded around the house. Her ashes, in a nice little wooden casket, sit on the mantlepiece in the front room. Yes, I know. But there they are.
So...where where we? Sitting next to my keyboard is a little plastic bottle contained four brownish stones, gleaming and polished. They could be waiting to be made up into some kind of jewellery -drop earrings or a nice broach. Perhaps that's what I will do with them. They are just some of the forty-plus gallstones I'd been carrying around inside me, my gall bladder acting as a kind of bag of marbles, and which were taken out of me in an emergency operation more than two weeks ago now and from which I'm still recovering.
I'd been having intermittent gallstones over the past few years: as the stone passed down the bile duct, a brief period of spasmodic, intense pain in the righthand side of the stomach, just below the rib cage, followed by 24 hours of feeling a bit grotty and then perfectly alright the next day. My consultant said not to bother about having the gall bladder out unless the attacks became more frequent. Two weeks ago, on a Saturday night, I had the first attack for almost two years. This time the pain didnt abate after a couple of hours. This time it went on and on, reaching peaks I just didn't know how to endure. After about three hours, desperate for help, I went to the casualty department where I was pumped full of pain-killers. When it began to ease, they sent me home. The next day, as previously, I had a slight fever. But this time, it didnt go away and the pain in my stomach stayed. After two days of rising temperature, I went back to the hospital, where to cut a long story short, I had an emergency op to take out the by now infected gall bladder the next afternoon. Which is when things really began to go wrong.
Firstly, the gall bladder was so big and bad, they could not use the normal keyhole surgery techniques to get it out and had to go to full slice me open mode, so the whole operation took two and a half hours. Secondly, as I was going under the aneasthetic, as I later learnt, I choked, bringing up some of my stomach contents, when then went down the pipe into my lungs, causing aspirational pneumonia, as its called. Thirdly, when they brought me to consciousness, my lungs suffered a reactive spasm and I couldn't get any air into them. I was put back under anaesthetic and woke up six hours later in intensive care, attached to every monitor, drip and drain you could imagine. And still with a bloody great tube down my throat.
After a very uncomfortable night under heavy sedation, they took the tube out the following morning. I spent two days in intensive care and a week on a main ward. It was three days before I could survive without the morphine drip, four days before I could walk unaided and five days before my lungs were strong enough to breath without oxygen. On the sixth day, I developed candidias in my throat, which was due to the anti-biotics that were being inject into my veins every few hours. Candidiasis is basically thrush and is the worst, driest sore throat you could imagine, causes a terrible tickling cough - not v good if you have stitches -and severe pains every time you swallow. Cue more drugs to cure that.
I came out last thursday, after ten days. My surgeon, who's poked around an open stomach or two, said my gall bladder was one of the worst he had seen. There's still pain around the stitches and deep in my lungs and the candidiasis is taking a long time to go. I can't sleep in any other position than flat on my back. Which means I dont sleep, much. I feel pretty weak most of the time. It will, I'm told, be several weeks before I can resume proper exercise or swimming, which puts paid to my ambition to take part in the Crouch End 10k later this month. My taste buds are mostly fucked for a while - wine and coffee taste terrible - my appetite is a bit lacking, although I eat once food is put in front of me. And I cant bend over or stretch very much. I'm not complaining about this, it just happened.
The good thing is that I dont have to worry about changing my diet. We can, it seems do without these troublesome organs. Neither, according to my surgeon, can I attribute what happened in any way to lifestyle factors. Gall bladders just go wrong, no-one quite knows why.
And like everyone else who experiences the NHS from the er, consumers' point of view, I came away utterly in awe of some of the nurses - their expertise (don't ever, ever, let a junior doctor starting poking around trying to get a needle into the veins on the back of your hand) their endless patience with difficult and demanding patients and their ability to work incredibly long hours and remain alert and cheerful. It made some of my twelve hour shifts as night editor of the Independent seem child's play. As for hospital food, well, I'll get back to that another day.
As I said, stuff happens. I'm not whining, just getting it all down while its still fresh and to help me keep my writing hand in. And although I was far from being in a seriously life threatening situation, I'm aware that sometimes we get forced out of of our comfort zones. Just a tad more aware of some of the realities of life. So that's why I'm particularly relishing the bursting, vibrant greener-than-green leaves of this spring, the remaining blossom, the sunshine, and, most of all, the birdsong in my garden in the early evening. I'm going to try and have a good summer.
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